321Lets Jam!
by Tom Kingsly
Summary: A series of Drabbles, shorts, oneshots and all other brief dips into the world that is Cowboy Bebop.Cowboy Bebop is the brainchild of Shinchiro Watanabe, not me


**The Truth Is Out There**

Spike took a long drag on his cigarette, letting hazy blue smoke drift up through the common room air. His lazy smirk and hands behind head stance told Faye he was enjoying the suspense. If there was one thing she hated it was suspense…and surprise…and being out of the loop…and loosing. It was on her face, she knew it, Spike knew it, that was why he was enjoying it so much.

"Come on, you can't stop there Spike," she said, shaking a fist at him from over the coffee table.

"Hold on Faye, I just need a little breather,"

"Quit holding out on me you lunkhead,"

"Alright quit whining ya big baby," he laughed

She watched him lean forward, he was going to tell her at last, all this damn waiting it was just so…ridiculous. When the dogs run out of their stalls they chase the rabbit until they cross the finish line, the greyhounds didn't need breathers and neither should Spike, the messy green haired idiot She just wanted to hit him so much; wipe that smarmy smirk off his face.

"So what happened then? come on you gotta tell me,"

"Well, we caught the bounty real easy, he was hiding just out past Pluto," he took another drag, she knew it was just to wind her up, "Anyway, we were gonna take him back but an escape attempt happened and 'badness' ensued and well y'know that thing that usually happens on bounties happened,"

"In other words you 'accidentally' killed him,"

"Yeah," he nodded as though the death of another man was somehow amusement, like something in a TV show, "But after that we were heading back to the hyper gate when, _whoosh_, something screamed straight past the Bebop's port side,"

"What was it?"

He tapped his big funny upturned nose and smiled again, "We chased it, don't know why, it just seemed like the thing to do. And when Jet got us in close I took Swordfish and went out after it. I tell you it was like nothing I'd ever seen before Faye. You know what it was?"

She shook her head, blowing bangs of deep violet out of her face. Her hair needed cutting.

Spike smoked some more, making her hate him all the more, "It was an alien Faye,"

"What? Get outta here, there's no aliens that's like something out of a science fiction cartoon,"

"Fine don't believe me, guess there's no point telling you the rest of the story,"

"No no, come on tell me. Maybe I'll believe you if the story gets better,"

"Alright well, we chased after it for a long time, I even shot it down with my plasma cannon, eventually," he had a big stupid smile on his face, like shooting stuff was the most impressive thing in the world instead of money. " So it went screaming down onto this little asteroid type planet thing,"

"Wow, is that a technical description,"

Spike shrugged it off, "So we went down to investigate it, there was no atmosphere and the Bebop couldn't even fit on this asteroid it was that small. So I went down in a suit and this thing…It was an alien ship, looked kinda like a squashed egg timer, all silver with slick fins on it. Probably no bigger than you're little zipper,"

"Red-Tail's big enough," she said and felt the heat in her neck.

"Hey hey, I'm not saying it isn't." His hands pushed the air away form him, "Anyway, we brought this thing back on board the Bebop and ahh, you don't wanna know the rest," he was smiling as he passively waved a hand at her.

"Like hell I don't. What happened?" her fist was clenched at him now.

"Alright," he leaned forward with his boyish smile, "if you really wanna know Jet took a blow torch to it and some cutting gear. Took us ages to get it open but when we did…Faye you wouldn't believe what we saw…"

"What, what did you see, quit messing with me Spike,"

"Well, hmm, how should I put this…you ever put a tomato in a microwave?"

What kind of stupid arsed question was that? She felt her face become wide with indignation and said, "Uh, no Spike, I haven't,"

"Oh, well, anyway that's what the inside looked like. I think my plasma cannon might have…exploded it inside the egg timer ship,"

"Wow, chalk up another victory for Spike Spiegel,"

"We put it through the DNA analyzer and studied it for a few days…y'know, what was left of it leastways,"

"And, And?"

He shook his head, "We couldn't match any of it, even the carbon-graph didn't recognise the metal the ship was made of. You know how meticulous Jet can get, I mean, he must have gone over that a dozen or more times. In the end we got so freaked out our only course of action was to flush it out into space. But actually, if we'd had the sense we could have taken it to some science guys or something--made some money,"

"Hah, so there's aliens huh, and yet only you and Jet have ever seen em. Sorry Spike, I still don't buy it,"

"Ask Jet, he won't lie,"

"Fine, I will," she stood up from the low backed yellow chair and straightened herself up again, smirked impiously at Spike and headed off toward the galley were Jet would be, either that or the docking bay, or maybe his bonsai room. As it happened the bigger, uglier, balder lunkhead she had to live with was clipping his bonsai trees--maybe it was a fetish. When she called him he flinched, mistimed a clipping of his sad little tree obsession and then looked at her like a really pissed off bear from behind his hairy face.

"What is it Faye?"

She stepped back at the choler in his voice, felt her hands go up to guard, "Whoa, easy Jet, I was just wondering about something Spike was telling me,"

He looked at her for a long moment and it must have been written on her face as he said, "Christ, You been eating that alien stuff with a spoon?"

Faye's heart jumped around inside her chest, bouncing off her lungs and ribs as blood began to pump out at ten times normal rate. She clasped her hands and said, "So its true, there really are aliens?"

"Yeah Faye, sure there's aliens," Jet slipped his hands behind his head, "that is, if aliens are made out of pulped tomatoes and fly around in food containers from derelict old cruise ships. Jeez you really believed him didn't you,"

And from behind her, someone started to laugh.

…ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE


End file.
